


Touch-Starved

by kaeorin



Series: Loki's Lullabies [21]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Affection, Avengers Movie Night, Comfort, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Loki (Marvel) is Sneaky, Reader-Insert, Stark Tower, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:35:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23676991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaeorin/pseuds/kaeorin
Summary: Thor tells Loki that the Midgardians need to touch each other in order to thrive, and then Loki notices that you don’t touch people all that often. Someone’s got to look out for you, right?
Relationships: Loki (Marvel)/Reader
Series: Loki's Lullabies [21]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1678240
Comments: 22
Kudos: 580





	Touch-Starved

The mortals wouldn’t stop touching each other. 

From the moment that the citywide lockdown went into place, Loki could not help but notice an increased amount of...touching. Some of it was more or less normal: Rogers and Barnes often drew each other into wrestling matches even before the world went insane, and it certainly wasn’t uncommon for Barton and Natasha to spend hours sparring in the gym. But overall, he noticed an absurd uptick in the amount of touching among the entire team: Stark would rest a hand on the small of Banner’s back as he passed him in the kitchen. Rogers would grab Natasha’s arm when she said anything he found remotely humorous. Clint often nudged teammates with his hip any time he walked past them, seemingly just looking for some kind of contact. 

When Loki brought it up to his brother one night, disguising his question under a layer of disdain and a throwaway comment about wanting to be sure to avoid walking in on the orgy which surely must be coming any day now, Thor had simply let out a loud, booming laugh, and clasped his shoulder. 

“They’re mortals, brother! They need another’s touch in order to thrive! Jane explained it to me, once. Even in their day-to-day life, humans require a certain amount of physical contact in order to feel secure and comfortable. That requirement increases as their stress increases.” He squeezed Loki’s shoulder and did not let go, even when he tried to shrug him off. “I’ve got to admit, I like all the touching as well. You should try it! There’s no better time than the present to begin improving your reputation!”

When Loki finally managed to shake him off, he stalked away, muttering his refusal under his breath. He didn’t even want to imagine the looks he would get if he tried to start touching these people who wanted him dead. 

There was really only one team member who hadn’t begun to make him nervous. You were the newest recruit. Though you’d proven yourself time and time again on missions and in battle, it wasn’t hard to see that you still didn’t quite feel comfortable here. You’d struck up a friendship with Maximoff, and Loki often found himself walking in on the two of you while you played with her hair, but you continued to hold yourself largely apart from the rest of the team. When they ate together at meal times, you sat quietly and only listened to their conversations. When Thor gathered everyone for a movie, you curled up in a chair by yourself. When you trained with the others in the gym, you focused hard on what you were doing and didn’t laugh or joke around half as much as everyone else, and when you were finished, you often disappeared into the shadows. As far as he could tell, you seldom touched anyone, and that didn’t change with this lockdown.

But you continued to draw his attention. If he happened to start walking in on you more often, when you were in common areas, well, surely that was only because everyone was around more often. When you were reading on a sofa, he could watch you for minutes at a time before you finally looked up and noticed him. He admired the way you could get wholly absorbed into the pages, apparently forgetting everything that surrounded you in the physical world. But he started to notice your hands. As you read, you took to holding the pages open with one hand, and caressing your arm, your face, the back of your neck, with the other. He noticed the way you smoothed your hands along your body in the gym—not entirely out of the norm for you, as you always seemed a bit uncomfortable with your form-fitting workout gear, but...with an increased frequency, anyway. Thor’s Movie Nights started happening more often, and Loki’s attention invariably drifted towards you in your chair, and the way you would comb your fingers through your hair, twirl it around your finger.

Humans needed touch to thrive. You did not appear to be the type of person to seek that out from your teammates. An idea began to grow in Loki’s mind.

He began very simply. After he got a feel for your routine, he settled himself onto the couch with a book of his own before he knew you’d come to read. Sure enough, you soon appeared in the doorway. He did not look up from the pages of his book, but he could sense the way you seemed to hover, hesitating. He held his breath while you tried to decide what to do, and tried not to release it too sharply when you joined him on the couch. There was no touching yet, but somehow he felt like he’d passed a test.

His next step more or less fell into his lap. In the gym one afternoon (he didn’t need to train much for a fight, but working off his excess energy made it easier not to want to burn the Tower to the ground), Maximoff approached him about throwing knives. He agreed to coach her before he could really think about it, but it ended up being a good thing. Before long, she’d shouted your name and waved you over to join them. Her abilities made it so she didn’t really need to worry about getting her stance exactly right, but, as you were not similarly blessed, he had to guide you through the proper form. You didn’t seem overly uncomfortable when he took your wrist to bend your arm correctly, or when he put his hands on your hips to pull your body into position. Maybe he got a little more permissive with himself, let his touch linger just a little bit beyond what was necessary. When you threw a blade and embedded it solidly into a block of wood, you’d exclaimed happily and threw your arms around him in a joyous embrace. 

At first, he felt frozen. It had been so long since anyone (other than Thor) had touched him without malice, let alone hugged him with so much enthusiasm. It had been like an instinct for you—celebrating your success by pressing your body against him—and that absolutely confounded him. By the time he’d regained enough control over himself to begin to slide his arms around you, you’d already gone stiff and stepped away. You mumbled fierce apologies at him even as you smoothed down your ponytail and ducked to retrieve the rest of your things. Then you fled from the gym entirely, all without looking at him a single time.

When he cast a bewildered look at Maximoff, her lips curled into a knowing smile that truly had no place on a mortal’s face.

It took some time, but slowly you stopped avoiding him again. Perhaps because he’d never so much as acknowledged you while reading, you rejoined him on the sofa only a few days later. He never got much reading done when you sat with him. Instead, he would stare at the words as he listened for the whisper of your fingertips against your skin. On some level, your human body knew that you needed to be touched, and it was trying so hard to fulfill that need on its own. He let his thighs fall open a bit, so he could touch you without making things too obvious, and tried not to smile when you did not pull away.

When it was your turn to clean up after dinner, Loki found himself hanging back to help you. Stark, of course, had a large and state-of-the-art dishwashing machine, but he’d noticed that you almost always did the dishes by hand. Even when the others teased you for it, asking if you’d grown up in the thirties like the super soldiers, you’d only ever smiled sheepishly and said you liked the process. That seemed like an easy enough way to try something else. After the others had finished with their gentle ribbing and cleared out, he stayed behind. You gave him a soft smile—the first time you’d really looked at him in almost a week—and asked how he was doing. 

It wasn’t hard to fall into something like a conversation with you. You’d chatted back and forth for a bit, mostly about the state of the world and how long this could possibly go on. He walked behind you, once, to get a dry dishcloth, and trailed his fingers along the small of your back as he did. When you were done scrubbing and rinsing the dishes, Loki wordlessly began to take them from you to dry them. As he had in the gym, he allowed his touch to linger for a moment or two. Even soaked with dishwater, your hands were soft. He let his mind wander a bit, imagining what it’d be like to enfold your hands with his and pull you in close. Naturally, as he did, he dropped the glass he was drying.

You went into action right away, crouching to gather up the shards that had dropped to the ground before he could even think to tell you not to move. Working together, you cleaned up the mess and hid it all safely in the garbage. It was only then that Loki noticed the blood. He grabbed your hand and pulled you closer for inspection. It looked like a piece of glass had sliced deep into the pad of your finger. You tried to pull your hand away even as your blood dripped down the back of his hand, but he didn’t release you. 

“God, it’s fine,” you said, laughing as though in an attempt to cover your embarrassment. “I’ll go get a first-aid kit.”

“Please. What kind of warrior would I be if I couldn’t take care of something like _this_?” This was nothing. Nearly everyone back home had the powers to heal something like this. He kept a tight grip on your hand as he whispered the incantation, and then watched as your skin knit back together. “There, see? You’re perfect again.” 

It was hard to keep himself from kissing your knuckles, but he managed.

The final step of his plan took place on the next movie night. Through a careful bit of conniving, Loki managed to get every other seat filled by a member of the team before you made your way to join them. Then he sat himself in your chair. The chair was large: more than enough for one person, and perhaps even enough for two, if they were rather comfortable with each other. He could feel Thor’s eyes on him, and Maximoff’s, and he even braced himself for one of the others to tell him to move, but no one said a word. 

When you finally joined everyone, he caught the way you hesitated in the doorway. You mortals could be so particular, and the tiniest little change of plans threw the best of you off-balance. He tried not to smirk. He heard you ask Maximoff for the large cushion that she was clutching, but she refused, claiming that she needed it in order to hide from the monsters in the movie. When you tried to sit on the floor in front of the sofa, Thor insisted that he wanted a clear path for retreat, in case the film was too scary.

“Anyway, there’s room by Loki!” When he gestured towards him in the chair, Loki felt a strange but intense rush of gratitude towards his brother. He tried to keep his expression as neutral as possible when he lifted an arm to illustrate the space beside him.

“I’m willing to share,” he agreed, and arched an eyebrow at you. You stood still for a moment, possibly trying to determine what, exactly, was his plan, but then Wanda had nudged you with her foot, spurring you to action. 

You were nothing but apologies as you sat beside him. Your bodies were pressed firmly together, and Loki found that he had to lift his arm and rest it around your shoulders in order to sit comfortably. He sent a prayer of sheer gratitude out into the universe that you did not angle your body away from him, did not seem overly tense. Tony made some remark about everybody being “comfy-cozy” and started the film.

As darkness fell around you, he felt your body relax against his. He leaned in closer to you, to whisper a soft “Is this alright?”, and you did not flinch. Instead, you nodded. His heart surged. Could you hear it? 

The movie wore on. It wasn’t terribly interesting, but Loki wasn’t paying attention to it anyway. Instead, he was completely attuned to you. When a (rather predictable) jump-scare startled you, he felt your whole body recoil, and began soft, comforting strokes against your upper arm. During one of the high-tension pursuit scenes, you gasped and turned to hide your face against his shoulder. Surely you had to hear his heart racing now, right? Imagine, someone like you seeking shelter against someone like _him_. He brought his hand up to comb through your hair, his attention completely focused on your face. How had he gotten through his days before this? How had he ever gone morning to night without being able to touch you? You were soft against him, and warm, and though of course there was no real danger here, it was clear that you trusted him to look after you through this imagined danger.

As the credits rolled, Maximoff insisted that you all watch something funny now, so she could get to sleep. There was something strange in her voice, some layer of amusement or deceit, and when Loki looked over at her, she was already looking at him. She winked. 

The “funny movie” was awful—insipid and contrived, like most Midgardian comedies—but, as before, Loki wasn’t paying it much attention anyway. This time, it seemed, neither were you. He had never paid attention as someone fell asleep, but tonight, he did. You ended up lying on him much more fully than the tight space necessitated, with your head on his shoulder and your hand on his chest. He reached to cover your hand with his and made every attempt to mentally catalog the way you felt against him.

Some time later, he only barely opened his eyes when he felt someone spread a blanket in his lap. “Sleep tight, brother,” Thor whispered against the top of his head in the darkness. “You’ve done well.”


End file.
